South of Broad

In the Kitchen

New paperback releases for reading groups

BookPage® Column by Julie Hale

FORD’S FAILED UTOPIA A finalist for the National Book Award, Greg Grandin’s compelling Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City brings to vivid life an extraordinary chapter in the career of Henry Ford. During the 1920s, Ford bought land in Brazil’s Amazon River basin, hoping to turn it into a rubber plantation that would supply his car business. He also dreamed of founding a town there that would resemble the sort of company-based community he had helped to establish in the U.S. Over a span of 18 years, Ford worked to fulfill this vision, sinking big money into the town, which was equipped with a golf course, movie theaters and Cape Cod-inspired houses. But the failure of the rubber industry, coupled with the natives’ resistance to the prudish value system Ford promoted, led to Fordlandia’s eventual demise. Grandin’s account of Ford’s forced urbanization of the jungle is larger than life, with the scale and weight of an epic story.Watch a video of Greg Gandin discussing Fordlandia on BookTV.

CONROY IN CHARLESTONSouth of Broad, Pat Conroy’s first novel in 14 years, is a sharply drawn portrait of the New South. Narrated by Leopold (Leo) Bloom King, a local gossip columnist looking back on his teenage years in the 1960s, the narrative offers glimpses of old Charleston, its blue-blooded families and the sense of change that pervaded the era. In high school, Leo mixes with a socially diverse crowd that includes Starla and Niles Whitehead, a pair of impoverished orphans from Appalachia; Ike Jefferson, one of the first black students integrated into Leo’s school; and twins Sheba and Trevor Poe—seemingly picture-perfect Southern siblings. The group remains connected over the years, and the ways in which their stories unfold are surprising and poignant. In 1989, the gang comes together to help Sheba find Trevor, who is missing in California—a reunion that brings the group full circle. Smart and sharp, Leo makes for a companionable narrator, and his insights into marriage, maturity and family have a wonderful authenticity. This is a big-hearted novel, and fans of its beloved author will savor every page.A reading group guide is available online.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS Monica Ali’s latest novel, In the Kitchen, is set in London’s Imperial Hotel, where executive chef Gordon Lightfoot oversees a staff of eccentric characters. The day-to-day routine of his kitchen, rendered by Ali in prose that’s wonderfully vibrant and precise, is turned upside down by the brutal murder of a hotel porter, a man from Ukraine. The crime brings to light the clandestine world of illegal immigrants and upsets Gordon’s sense of well-being. He had hoped to open his own restaurant but soon finds that his grip on reality is slipping. Betraying his fiancée, he becomes mixed up with a prostitute—a Belarusian who may be involved in a sex ring that’s based in the Imperial. Using the hotel as a microcosm for modern Europe, Ali skillfully examines such timely topics as gender, immigration and class. Author of the acclaimed novel Brick Lane (2003), Ali now serves up a complex, multilayered mystery.A reading group guide is available online.